Happy Thanksgiving from PR

Thanksgiving has become my favorite holiday (yes, passing up even Christmas, Halloween, and Independence Day) due largely to the fact that my family celebrates the crap out of it. We do Thanksgiving right. It's a week-long celebration filled with way too much family time and obscene amounts of good food. And the best part of all is that we get to sit around and talk and talk for hours. We play games. Get into fights. Watch too many movies. And it's always the best time I've ever had. I could go on and on about how much I love my family and how cool I think we are. But I'll spare you. Just this once. Needless to say, I have been a little depressed that I am the only one out of my 10 siblings that wasn't partying in Utah over Thanksgiving break this week. I thought about skipping Thanksgiving all together and going to a remote island with my boys. Basically pretending that the holiday just didn't happen for anyone this year. But Casey didn't have enough time off from practice to make any trip really worth it. And to tell the truth, I was sad at the thought of skipping my now favorite holiday. So we stayed and we ate and we partied.

And you know what? We had a great time. We started the holiday off celebrating with friends from church. We gathered at the church building in the afternoon and began our long day of feasting. We had two tables filled with all of the traditional food that Thanksgiving time makes me crave plus way too much pie and egg nog! I love our ward here in Puerto Rico. It's a small ward made up of people from all different walks of life. Smaller wards give you the opportunity to get to know more people on a more intimate level and offer more opportunities to serve. I've already taught a Relief Society lesson and spoken in sacrament. And I was in charge of the Thanksgiving party. It was a hit. Cash started off his first meal with whipped cream and three rolls and ended it with pie and two cupcakes. Within an hour of eating he had run himself ragged and was ready for a nap. After all three of my boys took naps to recover from turkey comas, it was time for round 2 of our Puerto Rican Thanksgiving.

We gathered at Beba's house with our Puerto Rican family. I showed them how to make green bean casserole (my favorite Thanksgiving side dish). And I watched them make all sorts of traditional dishes with their own spin on them. Cash actually mixed in some turkey for dinner with his cupcakes this time. And Guy had a bowl full of his first sweet potatoes (double layered with marshmallows, lucky baby). We finished off the dinner with turkey cupcakes and a hilarious game of Guesstures. I'm not sure if Casey and I are just terrible at that game or if it's the fact that they are yelling out guesses in Spanish and we have no idea what they are saying, but then someone standing by us will tell us if they got the right answer. It's makes it hard to feed off what they are saying and turn them in the right direction if it all sounds like they are shouting gibberish at you. Either way, we were the weak links of our teams, but it was so funny to watch and listen. We love the Morales and Rodriguez families that have adopted us. They love our boys like their own and always make us feel at home here in PR.

 

I'm grateful that there is an English speaking ward that we can attend and that we've quickly made good friends in that ward. I'm grateful to have a family to be with on holidays when we are so far away from our own families. I'm grateful that they love us and our sons as much as we love them. I'm grateful to be in tropical weather this holiday season. And I'm grateful to be with Casey, Cash, and Guy on a new adventure in our life together.

Casey said he was showing off his mustache in this picture. He grew it out for Movember. Sexy beast.

Baby Guy' First Thanksgiving

P.S. I'm grateful for all of my family and friends who read this too. hugs and kisses.